"If you can't tell me the speculative thing in fifteen minutes, can you tell me more about—Lady Yunalesca, you said?" Something about that story felt... off.

"Sure. It's relevant, anyway. But also, take this with a lot of scepticism, history books from a thousand years ago had a lot of flourish in their details and I had to piece the most likely truth from a lot of different ones."

"I will not believe everything you say completely literally," promises Azym.

"So, the way the story goes is that there were many machina cities—'machina' is the word in Spiran for machines that are forbidden by Yevon—but Bevelle and Zanarkand were the largest ones. There was a war, and sources definitely do not agree on the ostensible reason for that war, so I don't want to speculate. Zanarkand and Bevelle were on opposite sides of this war, and were escalating to a point where their weapons threatened to destroy the world.

"Then Sin appeared and razed Zanarkand to the ground. Yevon's teachings—as told to us by Lady Yunalesca—say that Sin was our punishment for letting things get that far, although it is unclear who was punishing whom. Also, the name 'Yevon' comes from a person called 'Yu Yevon'. Historical sources also don't agree on who exactly he was, but his were supposedly the teachings that Lady Yunalesca shared with Bevelle."

"—so Yevon is a person. The way everyone talks about him is confusing."

Zei tilts his head to both sides. "Yes and no. Yu Yevon was a person, but his teachings and philosophy are more important than who he was. And his name became metonymous with the philosophy—diligence, self-restraint, agape, hard work, the joy in small things. When people say 'praise be to Yevon' we're not really praising the dude, we are expressing gratitude for good fortune presumably brought about by adherence to Yevon's philosophical principles.

"His teachings were not only philosophical, though. The art of summoning, the rites of Sending, how to defeat Sin, those were all parts of it, too. So, it's a whole bundle of things, really, and trying to look at it from just one angle won't give you the whole picture."

Azym nods. "Okay, I suppose that makes sense." As much sense as anything. "—by the way, the prayer sign, the, uh..." He mimics it, arms outstretched to the sides then pulled back in towards his chest in a spiral, ending with his palms pointing up and down at each other as if they're holding an invisible sphere, with an accompanying bow. "In Zanarkand—my Zanarkand—it was just the gesture used by blitzball players and fans to wish for victory."

...he feels a wave of grief wash over him, saying that. Sayu loved using that gesture before and after every game, even games they didn't win, grinning at him widely. Like she was saying that the only victory she cared about was getting to be with the team, getting to do what they did. Like that was enough, and in the deepest of senses, it was.

That was—the most inconsequential thing, but—but yesterday's Sending seems to have pulled a dislocated bone back into position, and now every time he moves that limb it hurts. It's gonna hurt.

His eyes refocus on Zei—they didn't water, this time, he thinks, and hopefully he didn't give much away. It's—having to feel this is fine, he's okay with it, but he doesn't—doesn't want to have it impair him every time—

"...your Zanarkand is so fucking weird. I know you know that, but. So weird."

If he noticed Azym's moment there, he did not react to it.

No, Zei totally noticed. Whatever. He just shrugs. There's no... he got what he wanted, right, the fact that his head is still swimming with grief is not actually affecting their conversation so it's... fine.

"—anyway," he continues, correctly interpreting Azym as not wanting to talk about whatever just happened in his head there, "Lady Yunalesca is said to have taught Bevelle the arts of summoning and Yevon's philosophy, claiming that only once we all atoned for the sins of those nations and achieved purity as all peoples would Sin be able to be truly defeated. Until then, it would always return. But it could be temporarily stopped by us, at the cost of sacrificing the summoner who did it."

Azym has already informed the audience of his opinion about that last bit and will not bore them with a rehash. It doesn't interact particularly well with the state of mind he's trying to recover from, though.

"The pilgrimage ends in Zanarkand. There, we somehow learn to summon the Final Aeon. It differs from every other aeon—physically, no two of them look the same, and in level of power. The teachings do not clarify why, or how—only that a summoner who successfully completes their pilgrimage will be rewarded with the Final Aeon. And when they summon it, it has the ability to pierce through Sin's carapace and destroy it. It also kills the summoner as well as anyone who happens to be nearby, so these fights have historically typically happened in unpopulated areas."

"—ah." A note of—not brightness, exactly, but at least the system is not—inherently rigged. It's circumstantial. "So it's not that the summoning inherently kills the summoner, the Aeon is just so powerful that the summoner is caught in the destruction."

Shrug. "That's the going theory, yes, but no one who's seen a Final Aeon in action has survived to tell the tale, so."

"No unsent, either?"

"...no, no unsent, either. This is... probably not a meaningful fact, like I said they're pretty rare, and Sin's only been killed five times."

He shrugs again. "Was just a thought."

Zei nods and spends a few seconds in silence under the water, thinking.

Then: "So, I guess maybe I can tell you about the thing anyway, this conversation was quicker than I'd expected, but... also I think you may need a bit to get recentered?"

"Maybe. Maybe you could center me."

Zei sporfles and looks out at Azym from the corners of his eyes. "You're insatiable. Maybe I should invite Jassu with us just to get you down for a while longer."

"I knew he was into dudes. —wait, you're allowed to flirt with him?"

"I'm not on the team even not-technically-officially. Besides, we were raised together, there have been off-season months here and there, you know!"

"That is so unfair I would never forbid my teammates from flirting—"

—but his brain is lagging behind his mouth and he's thinking of all the times he did flirt with his team, with the way Yama just went along with it for the free dinners and never actually went any further than that and it was a lot of fun anyway, with the way Inochi melted under his fingers when they got alone in one of their bedrooms, with the way Hitomi would yell at them to get a room whenever he made Inochi blush but the three of them also had so much fun together, and with the way he matchmade Yama and Sayu, and how he met Hitomi's wife Yua one time and the two of them spent a whole night making sure Azym regretted meeting them very much (he loved every second of it)—

He went to Hitomi's wedding, two years ago. She was so happy, he had never seen her wear such a radiant smile, not before, not since. He understood the word 'radiant' as a descriptor of people then, the idea that someone could look so joyous they shone like the sun.

He recorded Yama's proposal to Sayu, six months ago. At Yama's request. Sayu went red as a tomato and took nearly a minute of stammering her "I do" but it's not like anyone doubted she was going to say yes. And when she did the whole team jumped out of where they were hiding to applaud and congratulate them and she meeped and she was crying and she kept punching Azym on the arm but she was jubilant, she was so happy that her chosen family was there to share this joy with them.

And Hideo, who was extremely ace, and who watched all of this in such amusement and exasperation. All the times he pulled Azym and Inochi by the ear from the locker room so they wouldn't be late for practice, all the times he flirted just to be a little shit, all the times he made Inochi and Sayu blush and laughed at their expense. He was a bit mean, and Azym would not have traded him for anything in the world.

Azym couldn't stop the tears, this time, they came unbidden and overflowed with no respect for his image or his dignity, with no respect for where he was or whom he was with. He turned around so Zei wouldn't see it, but damnit Zei was going to know, and, and was going to pity him or, or, damnit—

Zei—falls silent, and politely looks away anyway. "We can talk about that later," he murmurs, grabbing his clothes to run the magic water through them and rub them together to get rid of the accumulated grime that the laundry spell was not quite able to get rid of.